RICHMOND, Va.—By almost 100.000 votes, Virginians approved a Democratic-pushed referendum that redoes the Commonwealth’s congressional map from the current 6-5 Democratic margin to 8-1 Democratic, with two other new districts leaning Democratic.
With 97.2% of precincts reporting, 1,574,538 (51.5%) of Virginia voters said yes and 1,485,785 (48.5%) said no. The bad news for Trump was that with those results, the Dems have beaten him to a draw or better in the gerrymandering battle he started a year ago by strong-arming Texas into changing its congressional district configuration to favor more Republicans than ever. And the bad news in Virginia followed the release of AP poll results that showed the president at a job approval rating of only 33 percent, his lowest total ever.
The GOP now plans to retreat to court. It wants state judges to throw the referendum result out by arguing the Democratic-dominated and more progressive General Assembly didn’t follow state referendum law.
The referendum result, if it stands, is important to workers, however.
The sole union leader to comment after the votes, Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, hailed the result. She noted that where voters actually cast ballots, they OKd pro-progressive and pro-Democratic redistricting maps.
“Tonight was a repudiation of overreach from this admin and Congress,” Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher, tweeted on BlueSky.“In the only two redistricting efforts that went to the people, and not powered through a rigged legislature, people voted for fairness. Virginia voters turned out to protect our democracy,” Weingarten elaborated.
The other state with actual balloting was deep-blue California. Earlier, a remap adding up to five new Democratic U.S. House seats was passed by 64%-36% among 11.57 million votes cast. Its House delegation is 42-7 Democratic, with one pro-Republican independent and two vacancies.
Virginia is more purple, and its voters often swing back and forth. Right-wing anti-worker President Donald Trump–whose mass firings of federal workers have hit vote-rich Northern Virginia hard–taped robocalls for “no” votes, and former GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin stumped the state.
Republicans are blaming one another for their defeat at the polls as they recognize that their one-time advantage in the gerrymandering war with Dems evaporated overnight last night in Virginia. Trump is now turning up the pressure on Florida Republicans and their governor, Ron DeSantis, to rush through changes in their district lines in order to minimize the effects of their defeat in Virginia.
Republicans in Indiana say they are coming under attack from Trump and his backers for their earlier refusal to pay for the president’s gerrymandering game.
In heavily Democratic Maryland (7-1) and Illinois (13-4) and heavily Republican Indiana (9-2 GOP), state lawmakers refused to redraw the lines despite pressure from Trump on the GOP. There was no great remap demand in the other two states.
Trump faced a very slim GOP U.S. House majority—now 217-213 with one independent and four vacancies—and the likelihood he’d lose control of the House this fall. His popularity, never high to begin with, slid as voters were shocked by his inflation, power grabs, constitutional crimes, graft, and the illegal war on Iran.
Trump started the gerrymandering war by demanding that Texas’s GOP-gerrymandered legislature remap that state even more to flip five seats to the GOP. The Texas delegation is 25-13 Republican. Its legislature genuflected to Trump and did so.
As a result, several Democratic incumbents, including prime Trump foe Al Green in one redrawn district and union organizer Greg Gosar in another, face intraparty competition.
California countered Texas with its five additions for progressives, via the referendum there.
GOP state lawmakers then remapped Missouri and North Carolina to add one potential GOP seat each in already lopsided Republican delegations. An Ohio redistricting commission added another potential GOP pickup, endangering pro-worker Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D), Congress’s longest-tenured woman.
A court-ordered remap in Utah unified its one big blue-leaning spot, Salt Lake City, into one district. It’s now split among all four Utah districts, yielding four Trumpite Republicans.
The Virginia results, which will hold through the 2030 general election, would effectively wipe out the rest of the GOP national gains if the Democrats there increase their edge to 10-1.
Given Virginia’s importance in the redistricting wars, both sides brought in their big guns. They also spent more than $81 million combined, with “yes” outspending “no” $56.4 million-$24.6 million.
For the GOP, Trump taped some ads. For the Democrats, the rock star was former President Barack Obama.
“By voting yes, you have a chance to do something important, not just for the Commonwealth, but for the entire country,” Obama said in the 48-second video ad. “By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to take unfair advantage in the midterms.”
“By voting yes, you can take a temporary step to level the playing field, and we’re counting on you…Make a plan, show up and vote ‘yes,’ Virginia.” Virginia is more purple, and its voters often swing back and forth.
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